Gwinnett educator lands his school on national healthy list

Rodney Wayne believes that playing outside should be mandatory for children.

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W.C. Britt Elementary

Britt Elementary student Audreyana Hernandez tees off during an introduction to golf session last year during the after-school fitness program.

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W.C. Britt Elementary

Tatiana Wayne(with ball) and other students play sports during the after-school fitness program.

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“You have ‘No child left behind,’ so perhaps you should have ‘No child left inside,’ ” said Wayne, a Gwinnett county educator whose upbringing in inner-city Chicago fostered his creativity and ingenuity in the realm of recreation. Vacant lots were transformed into baseball diamonds and football fields, sticks doubled as bats and old containers sufficed as basketball goals.

But Wayne said he seldom witnesses the same enthusiasm for play from today’s video-game generation. Greater emphasis should be placed on health and fitness to combat the childhood obesity epidemic, he said.

“Telling a kid to eat right and exercise is not enough for our new generation of kids,” said Wayne, a health specialist at W.C. Britt Elementary in Snellville who incorporates games and other innovative ideas into his teaching. “We have to keep exercise, fruits and vegetables interesting.”

Thanks to Wayne, Britt Elementary made the grade — or the polls — as the eighth “healthiest” school in the nation, according to Health magazine. The publication cited the school’s “outstanding, culturally sensitive, creative health-curriculum solutions.” Britt also received strong accolades for motivating and engaging its more than 900 kindergarten through 5th grade students with taste tests, farm visits, school gardening, community-health plays and visits by dentists, according to the publication.

“Community partners, other disciplines, sports, cooking — I wish schools across the country would use this program,” wrote a panelist for the magazine.

The school’s curriculum mandates that messages of healthy eating and physical activity be integrated into other subject areas and that all students have the opportunity to participate in physical activity breaks on a daily basis.

The school also offers a range of competitive and non-competitive physical activities such as intramural sports designed to engage students in life-long learning.

In addition, Wayne conducts a voluntary after-school program in October where fifth graders take part in activities such as pilates, aerobics and various games — some of which Wayne invented. The program attracted 22 children when he introduced it four years ago and grew to 55 students last year.

“I thought that since this will be the fifth graders’ last year [at Britt], my program will give them something to remember for a lifetime,” said Wayne, 36, a father of three young children.

He also teaches the children about healthy nutrition and incorporates ways to help them get excited about food.

“The kids appear attentive and they go back home and they talk about it,” he said. “If the kids are taking it to the dinner table and talking about it, that’s a plus.”